Bloc Party – Intimacy
If there has been one trend to emerge out of 2008, it has been that bands are following the Radiohead route of rush-releasing albums as soon as they’re announced to dodge the media hype. So far this year The Raconteurs and Sigur Rós have both released new albums through this method with varying degrees of success. Now, Bloc Party have decided to join the bandwagon. They put out their third album Intimacy as a download last Thursday, with a physical release to follow in October with additional songs.
Intimacy definitely follows the official statement of the album’s release, combining elements of both their previous albums (the brilliant Silent Alarm and the boring A Weekend In The City). Combine that with elements of electronic music, which they experimented with on stand alone single Flux, and big beat music, as heard on lead single Mercury, you can conjure up what Intimacy sounds like. There is certainly more variation on this album than any other Bloc Party LP.
It starts off brilliantly. Ares follows the tradition that Bloc Party seems to have – to write brilliant album openers. Clearly influenced by the Chemical Brothers, and showcasing the drumming talent of Matt Tong, it sets a high benchmark early on. There are tracks that end up on a par like Trojan Horse and Halo but when you listen to the rest of the album, it feels like it slips away slightly in quality slightly.
However, the variation on this album, as I said earlier, is enormous. There are so many musical touches that I could list but then it would make for pretty dull reading. Such touches include the Radiohead-esque drumming, the backing vocals, which at points, sound not only highly dramatic but also sinister, and soft strings. You certainly can’t say that this is a boring listen, as each track is different.
Intimacy is an LP that confirms to everyone that Bloc Party are not a band to be pigeonholed. Kele has said he views this as a break up album, and some of his lyrics make this point pretty obvious. These tales of heartache and pain have been with Bloc Party throughout their entire career. It is to be argued that we’ve heard it all before and that it is just a repetition of previous songs, clouded by an explosion of sound that the band creates. It also doesn’t help that the last song is essentially I Still Remember, except with a different title and different lyrics and a longer duration.
But maybe this needs time, so I’m gonna give it a couple more listens. You can’t fault Bloc Party for their bravery in trying new ideas and one thing is for sure – it kicks the arse out of A Weekend In The City.
RATING – 3/5
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Posted on August 25th, 2008 by Max
Filed under: Albums, Reviews
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[...] have failed to really strike a chord with me in the same way as Silent Alarm did. As I said in my review of Intimacy a couple of months back, their experimentation is to be applauded but sometimes it just doesn’t [...]